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Night out in Omoide Yokocho

What a difference a few hours makes. When we arrived in the early evening, the little alley, also known as Memories Alley, was now filled with lots of people, noise, lights and amazing smells.

Mick looking very happy he had found what he had been looking for.

We didn’t get too far down the alley before Mick decided we would take a seat and try to work out the menu. The little business was run by three generations of the same family and it was impressive watching them work around each other and the very small kitchen area they had.

We each ordered a beer and only one piece of yakatori (grilled chicken thigh on skewers), as we had already decided we would try to visit a few more places. While there were some more challenging items on the menu, such as chicken gizzard, chicken neck, chicken skin and chicken heart, you could say that we both “chickened out”.

It was fun sitting so close to the action and to other people for the experience. Funnily enough most of the other guests while we were there were Australian – two young families – and between us we filled the place.

Mick and I then paid our bill – the equivalent of $30AUD and continued down the alley. There was so much to see.

These are charcoal sticks used to cook yakatori

There was no space at this one, but like the other izakayas in this alley, there was a second floor, but there was no way I was interested in trying to get up those little steps.

Even if I could make it up, I knew I’d have to come down on my bottom!

So, we walked on.

And then we spotted it.

We later found out that this bar is very famous and that other guests were there because they had read about it .

We met some very nice Mexican people, an Indian man named Agen and a couple from Seattle. Agen told us that he had used AI (ChatGPT ) to plan his few days in Tokyo. He had provided information about his age, background and interests and ChatGPT produced a four-day program that he showed us. ChatGPT had recommended he visit this bar. That blew me away. I have spent months planning our trip and it sounds like I could have done it in a matter of a few minutes.

Mick ordered a dry sake which was poured from this over-sized bottle by the waitress.

Mick always likes to read the fine print, especially to check out the alcohol content.

She initially placed the sake glass in a small lacquered box and proceeded to slowly pour the sake until the glass was over-flowing and the little box was full of sake. This was to be used as a second and third glass.

A bit dark – but check out the little box of sake. I chose a glass of Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon.

We ended up spending quite some time here and gained some useful tips about where to visit tomorrow evening. Bar Albatross has a second location in Shinjuku Golden Gai, where supposedly there are almost 300 small eating and drinking establishments. But if we end up going there, I think we should try to eat a little more than we did tonight.

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